Resources/Articles Archives

Gathering Talk By Mark Buckner

Scrum for Life: A Tale of 2 Journeys

by Mark Buckner

We’ll take a look at the Scrum Journey and lessons learned of two very different groups: the Power & Energy Systems Research Group at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, an interdisciplinary team of researchers at the Department of Energy’s largest multi-science laboratory working on some of the most challenging problems facing the modernization the electric power grid, and FIRST Robotics Competition Team 4265 the Secret City Wildbots, a team of high school students who in just 6 weeks design, build, and program a robot to compete in the premier “Sport of the Mind.”

Dr. Mark A. Buckner is Senior Research Scientist at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory and the Leader of the Power and Energy System Group (P&ES).

Gathering 2016 Keynote Presentation By Joe Justice

Gathering 2016 Presentation By Joe Justice

Joe Justice, Team Wikispeed founder, was a keynote speaker at the first Big Orange Square Gathering in Boulder, Colorado August 25 and August 26. Here is an overview of his topic, a link to his presentation, and a bit more about Joe.

Joe Justice
President of Scrum@Hardware, Scrum, Inc. and Founder, Team Wikispeed

Scrum: Disrupting the Automotive Industry

Old-thought manufacturing teams gather requirements, design the solution, build it, test it, then finally deliver it to market. Today, in some automotive companies, the design portion can take three to twelve years followed by a build cycle of five to fourteen years. This means it is possible to buy a brand new car representing a team’s understanding of the customer’s needs twenty-four years ago!

Using the Scrum framework, Joe Justice founded Team Wikispeed, enabling a completely different pace of development. This all-Scrum volunteer-based, “green” automotive prototyping company, iterates an entire car every seven days. Learn how they use Scrum with Lean production methodologies to compress the whole development cycle into a one-week “sprint.”

Career Highlights

TEDx speaker, and coach for agile hardware and manufacturing teams around the world
Founded Team Wikispeed in 2006, and with the distributed, collaborative, volunteer team tied for 10thplace in the Progressive Insurance Automotive X Prize
Formalized eXtreme Manufacturing, a process adapting the fastest-moving methods of leading software startups to non-software development, testing, and manufacturing
Has been featured in Forbes, CNN Money, Fast Company, and the Discovery Channel, for his work reducing time to value in companies worldwide.

The Gathering Agenda

The first Big Orange Square Gathering will be held in Boulder, Colorado at the iconic, beautiful Boulderado Hotel (where a pivotal Scrum for Software Gathering was held many years ago).

The agenda is almost complete, although we are still adding information, but here’s what you can look forward to:

Thursday, August 25th

8:00 Breakfast, networking, sign-up, lots of coffee

9:00 Opening of the Gathering

9:15 Keynote: Joe Justice – Scrum: Disrupting the Automotive Industry

10:30 Coffee

10:45 Talk, Mike Few (ARCA): Combat Scrum – Case study applying Scrum framework in combat operations in Iraq during “The Surge.”

12:00 Lunch, Networking

1:00 Talk: Jeanne Bradford (TCGen): Learnings from the Trenches

2:00 Workshop: Jeanne Bradford

3:00 Refreshments & Networking

3:15 Break-out groups:

1. Teaching Scrum for hardware: develop games, exercises, …

2. Big Orange Square Principles: eXtreme Engineering, Lean, Objects, Patterns

3. Our Manifesto: Wording the Big Orange Square Manifesto & Principles

4:30 Review of the break-out groups, feedback

5:00 Closing, choices for dinner.

5:15 Excursion to McGuckin Hardware – the largest hardware store in the US!

Friday, August 26th

8:00 Breakfast, networking, coffee

9:00 Keynote: Kevin Thompson – Agile Hardware Development with Scrum

10:30 Coffee

10:45 Talk, Mac Felsing: Applying modeling to real world objects

12:00 Lunch, Networking

1:00 Workshop: Mac Felsing: modeling

3:00 Refreshments & Networking

3:15 Talk, Mark Buckner: Scrum for Life: A Tale of 2 Journeys

Our Manifesto: Wording the Big Orange Square Manifesto & Principles

Gathering retrospective

5:00 Closing, choices for dinner, plans for Saturday (build party)

Webinar: Using Scrum For Hardware Development

On August 11, 2016, Belatrix Software welcomed Agile expert, Hubert Smits, to share his expertise on how you can use Scrum for hardware development. Over 50 CIOs, CTOs, and Directors attended this informative webinar. The webinar is now available!

Here is the description of the webinar Hubert gave:

Agile development has become a well-known and effective software development methodology. But can you take Agile, and apply it to other areas of your business, for example to hardware development?

Here’s what is covered in this webinar:

Introduction to the aspects of Scrum for hardware — Scrum, XP, Lean, Objects
Real-life examples of solutions to common problems — suppliers, tooling, review
Case study — results of Scrumming product development at John Deere
Implementation advice — first steps on the way to Scrum for hardware

Whether you are a CTO, Scrum Master, or other technology professional, this webinar will provide you with crucial information in your journey to expanding and using Scrum for hardware development.

Listen to the recording and view the slides here

Is Agile Only For Software? A Webinar With Hubert Smits (CST)

Thursday , August 11th
11:00 am PDT/ 2:00 pm EDT/ 6:00 pm GMT

Agile development has become a well-known and effective software development methodology. But can you take Agile, and apply it to other areas of your business, for example to hardware development?

To explore this, once again Belatrix is delighted to welcome Agile expert, Hubert Smits, to share his expertise and insights. In this upcoming webinar we will explore:

Introduction to the aspects of Scrum for hardware — Scrum, XP, Lean, Objects
Real-life examples of solutions to common problems — suppliers, tooling, review
Case study — results of Scrumming product development at John Deere
Implementation advice — first steps on the way to Scrum for hardware
Whether you are a CTO, Scrum Master, or other technology professional, this webinar will provide you with crucial information in your journey to expanding and using Scrum for hardware development.

You can follow the buildup and the live webinar on Twitter with the hashtag #AgileBSF

To Register or for more info go here.

We look forward to seeing you there!

The Gathering 2016

The Scrum4HW Gathering 2016

A short, informal chat with Hubert Smits about The Scrum4HW Gathering

Editor’s Note: Hubert Smits is one of the organizers of The Scrum4HW Gathering. Here are a few of his thoughts about why he put this conference together.

Why Is It Called The Gathering?

In our Scrum community, we know the event ‘Gathering’ and so I use it to describe this event because it is more accurate than the word conference. It is, in a sense, a conference, but it is also an environment designed for people to come together and work together, share, learn and build together. It’s a very collaborative experience.

Who Are The Speakers?

The speakers come from within the community. They give a talk about something they’ve worked on, experiences they’ve had and then they invite the attendees to participate in a collaborative effort. To collaborate, we usually have someone speak on a topic and then, following the Q&A, we solve a problem or add to the topic. Of course, we use Scrum frameworks to do this. The keynote speakers are Joe Justice and Kevin Thompson, PhD. Joe is a consultant at Scrum, Inc., a TEDx speaker, and coach for agile hardware and manufacturing teams around the world. He is the founder of Team WIKISPEED. He’s a great guy, a good friend and he is an inspirational speaker with a great deal to share about successfully using scrum in hardware projects. Kevin has a doctorate in Physics from Princeton University, and extensive background in managing software development projects. He will also share an excellent and pragmatic talk. His talk will focus on the basic concepts of developing hardware with the Scrum framework. He will address how Scrum for hardware can differ from norms commonly seen in the software world.

Why The Hotel Boulderado?

I selected the Hotel Boulderado because the second Scrum for Software Gathering was held here. I attended that one and it was led by Ken Schwaber. That Gathering laid the foundation for what is now known as the Scrum Alliance. This Gathering of Scrum for hardware folks will meet at the same hotel where that great movement began.

Why Are You Doing This?

When I am restless or need to relieve stress, I got out to my workshop and I make things. When I am working, I am teaching and using Scrum. It is natural for me to put these two passions together. So, why not build a community with this focus?

Deep Dive Into Agile For Industry

Note: This article is only for historic purposes, the first Scrum4HW gathering took place in 2016.

This August in Boulder, Colorado: A Gathering of people who have an interest to teach, coach or drive a Scrum implementation in a hardware setting.

There are three offerings – register for one or register for all.

A Train the Trainer Class: taught by Peter Borsella, Lonnie Johnson-Weaver and Hubert Smits.

The Gathering: The first collection of people who are interested in Scrum implementations in a hardware setting. Joe Justice, Kevin Thompson, PhD and Tom Friend are our guest keynote speakers. There’ll be many more attending, teaching, meeting and discussing, including: Peter Borsella, Lonnie Weaver-Johnson and Hubert Smits.

Build Party: This is your chance to get hands-on experience with building a car!

Attendance is building. We hope you’ll join us for some of it or all of it!

Scrum For Hardware Webinar

Hubert Smits is an assertive and clear speaker who uses his talks to share Scrum with the product development world. In June 2016, he led a webinar hosted by the Scrum Alliance. In the presentation, he discussed:

The aspects of Scrum for hardware
Examples of Scrum solutions to common problems
A case study about the results John Deere has seen from Scrum in product development
How to implement Scrum

If you are a Scrum Alliance member, you can log in and watch the presentation here.

Not a Scrum Alliance member or do not want to watch the video? Download the presentation slides.